Research Finds No Link Between Woman’s Personality and Risk

It's hard to imagine that your personality could affect your risk of developing a disease, but past research suggested that personality might be able to influence certain conditions. Reassuringly, research found no link between personality traits and breast cancer risk.

Most studies looking at how personality affects disease risk have examined personality traits in people who were already diagnosed with a disease. Doing research this way is challenging because there's no way to be sure whether a person's personality traits were the same before and after diagnosis. It's possible that dealing with the disease and its treatment could change someone's personality.

For some women, the challenges of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment may temporarily affect their moods, both positively and negatively. In the long run, many breast cancer survivors say their experience fundamentally changed -- in a positive way -- their views of themselves and their relationships with their loved ones and the world at large.

While your personality doesn't affect your breast cancer risk, there are other lifestyle factors that do. For information on how you can make your risk for breast cancer as low as it can be, visit the breastcancer.org Lower Your Risk section.